Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Bill Gates: the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Bill Gates: the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year

by Alex Steffen from World Changing. While celebrating Gate's thesis that carbon emissions must go to zero, the author points out some important flaws in his argument.

We can reinvent what prosperity means and how it works, and, in the process both reduce the ecological demands of that prosperity and improve the quality of our lives. In most cases, this is a smarter approach than simply improving efficiency.

There is only one small problem--this cannot be done within the system of capitalism.